Google’s authorship data – LegalPPC’s recommendation

There are 2 ways to get authorship data connected to your personal Google+ page so as to get the author’s thumbnail photo next to content that Google displays in its search results:

(1) First method:

Verify the author’s email with Google (when matching the domain of the website) at https://plus.google.com/authorship and include a byline in each post or article (for practical reasons, the byline would only work for blog posts and articles on main website), NOT for content posted elsewhere on the web or for static content on the main site.

(2) Second method:

Include a link in the content specifically identifying the author of the content. This method is of course necessary for content published off of the main website.

Recommendation:

The second method should be used in ALL cases as a matter of course, with the first method also employed (in addition to, not instead of) for the limited purpose of blog posts on the author’s main website, including the correct byline (exactly as it appears in the author’s Google+ profile, for example, “By Ken Matejka” and not “By Kenneth Matejka”).